What is chiropractic care?
Chiropractic is a natural method of health care that focuses on treating the causes of physical problems, rather than just the symptoms, like pain and stiffness. Chiropractic is based on a simple, but powerful premise: With a normally functioning spine and a healthy lifestyle, your body is better able to heal itself. That’s because the spinal cord, which is protected by the spine, is the main pathway of your nervous system. It controls feeling, movement, and function throughout your body.
How does a chiropractor improve my health?
A doctor of chiropractic is uniquely qualified to evaluate and restore the health of your spine. Along with spinal adjustments and related treatments, a chiropractor emphasizes healthy everyday living (to help maintain spinal corrections and avoid future problems). Healthy everyday living includes good diet/nutrition/eating habits, exercise, and good posture/ergonomics (movement patterns/lifting techniques). Your chiropractor can help you understand the importance of healthy movement, proper posture, and strengthening exercises.
What are Spinal Adjustments?
Activities as common as prolonged sitting or standing, extended computer use, repetitive movements, improper lifting and bending techniques can all contribute to misalignments in the spine. Spinal misalignments can cause nerve irritation, muscle spasm, restricted movement and pain. Immobility, muscle imbalances, trigger points, and spinal muscle deconditioning all contribute to poor functioning of the joints in the body. Aside from discomfort and inconvenience, poor functioning of the joints contributes to an acceleration of degenerative joint processes, like osteoarthritis. After locating any misaligned vertebrae in your spine, a chiropractor manually applies pressure and repositions the vertebrae. These corrections are called adjustments. Gentle adjustments can help reduce nerve irritation, restore spinal alignment, improve mobility, and relieve pain and stiffness. Chiropractic therapy can enhance the body’s healing ability, performance, and resistance to illness by improving the overall health of the nervous system. In this way, chiropractic works to help your body heal itself.
How does Chiropractic reduce pain?
Merriam-Webster defines pain as “usually localized physical suffering associated with bodily disorder (as a disease or an injury); also : a basic bodily sensation induced by a noxious stimulus, received by naked nerve endings, characterized by physical discomfort (as pricking, throbbing, or aching), and typically leading to evasive action.” Pain is a message created by the brain to signal cellular injury (the “noxious stimulus” in the above definition) in the body. The pain is a signal, which alerts us to an ongoing process in the body, that our system is not able to overcome on its own. As a Chiropractor, I work to identify the SOURCE of the pain, so that we can make a correction, remove the nerve irritation and stop the injury signal which is causing the pain. Drugs and creams that we use to relieve pain only mask the injury process. They do not identify and correct the source of pain as does a chiropractic exam and adjustment (treatment). Chiropractic was ranked ahead of all conventional treatments, including prescription drugs, by readers with back pain (Consumer Reports, August 2005) – 34,000+ readers ranked Chiropractic #1 for Low Back Pain.
What type of adjustment does Dr. Leibman use?
At Matthews Chiropractic Center, you will primarily receive adjustments to your spine by my hands. I most commonly provide DIVERSIFIED CHIROPRACTIC ADJUSTMENTS and FLEXION-DISTRACTION therapy. Diversified adjustments are meant to return motion to the spine in areas where I feel the spinal joints are not moving well. This adjustment often results in an audible ‘pop’ or clicking sound which is the result of gas being released from a restricted joint capsule. Flexion-Distraction therapy involves using a hinged table (with the patient laying face down) to facilitate the separation of the spinal joints, thereby taking pressure off of the discs. Creating motion with pressure alternately on and off the disc brings nutrients into the disc, helping to heal the disc and keep it healthy. This is a very comfortable, low force way to stretch spinal muscles and improve spinal motion.
What can I expect in the office?
At Matthews Chiropractic Center, there are no high pressure sales pitches, no scare tactics, no contracts to sign for future services, just PATIENT CENTERED CARE aimed at making you feel better, returning normal spinal function, and working to keep it that way.